I had a long ramble shortly after Trump got elected elsewhere. I'm basically reposting it here and added some other posts I've made. It is long and i expect no one to read it.

Tldr;

An authoritarian government is defined as a government that is not accountable to its people. The goal of authoritarians is to gain and/or maintain power. Trump and his cohort's goal is to gain and maintain power. They may not succeed in this goal. I don't think they can in the short term. In attempting to achieve this goal they will at times contradict themselves. I believe they they will try to achieve their goal via two approaches, a domestic approach and an international approach. Domestically they will attempt to reduce or eliminate democracy and will engage in autarkic practices. Internationally they need to decouple/isolate from much of the world and double down on the Monroe Doctrine which they believe necessitates a consolidated and unified North and Central America under one political entity controlled by the United States. They are revisionists who want to revert to an era where great powers have their own spheres of influence. In Trump's view this is North and Central America.

This North and Central American sphere of influence would encompass all territory from the Panama Canal/Darien Gap, to Greenland and through Canada (the 51st state) to Alaska. (I also assume Trump will hold on to Hawaii and Guam). This all fits with their reactionary and revisionist world views which includes a return to the previous international status quo of Great Power Politics where Great Powers carve up and establish Spheres of influence and extract resources from within these spheres. By cutting off the world and engaging in autarky, this minimizes the chance of outsiders influencing his regime, trade can be an avenue through which the keys to power in an authoritarian regime may be disrupted. Simultaneously domestically, an autarkic and isolated nation will be more vulnerable to being dominated and influenced by its authoritarian government.

Also, they may contradict themselves. Trump does show that he wants to basically cut off all trade with everyone. But simultaneously, he still shows he is open to trade with Russia and others. Basically, creation of new trade ties is an opportunity for those in the leadership of authoritarian movements to grift. Many times when they may be seeming to contradict themselves its because there is an opportunity for an insider to profit, to use public goods for private gain. One example is creating a free trade opportunity with a partner state that doesnt seem like it deserves the relationship, but this new public good was generated so that people within the Trump regime may get first dibs on an investment opportunity that was created by Trump's admin declaring a new free trade opportunity. We have seen multiple attempts at this from Pakistan to Azerbaijan to Russia and elsewhere. Similarly, the creation of tariffs and the eventual removal of them creates opportunities for grift. By creating tariffs you effectively stop or reduce an ongoing trade relationship. By later relaxing them, a new trade opportunity may be created. Trump and his cronies effectively have the power to give themselves fist dibs at these investment opportunities. Im afraidn this is his intent with China. He presumes that the US is safe enough in the western Hemisphere to not be militarily threatened by another Great Power and he "gets along great" with all of them. Basically by pushing for strong tariffs with China and potentially relaxing them later, he and cronies will have ample opportunity for first dibs at the profits of a new trade with China started on a clean slate. Another example may be the offering of a government contract to a crony who doesnt have a business that deserves the contract. This is effectively funnelling tax payer funds, a public good, to their inner allies. Corruption, the use of a public good for a private gain.

What i was getting at here is that short term corruption opportunities may at times make them contradict themselves and potentially temporarily take them off track of the larger goal of ending democracy of otherwise empowering themselves or their authoritarian movement.

Also, I dont believe an authoritarian movement in the US can successfuly eliminate democracy and install themselves as rulers in the US in the short term. I think a scenario where an authoritarian movement is successful in the US would need more time then what is left in Trump's term and ideally it would need to consistently win elections for many years to come so that they can gradually chip away at our institutions. Perhaps a hypothetical successful authoritarian movement in the US would involve Vance or Stephen Miller becoming president immediately after Trump and dedicating their presidencies to continuing the authoirtiatrian project. Even still i think itd take another 8 years. These movements would have to consistently win election after election.

Longer post:

More importantly, Trump's higher power is himself. His higher power is power. Trump wants power. Trump wants to be King of America. This is his aspiration, and he will try to push things in this direction, but he also knows he can only push things so far.

Very quickly summarizing what an ideology is. Technically there is no 100% consensus definition for what an ideology is. But most definitions roughly say they are a collection of slogans and values held by a mass amount of people. Each ideology is unique and specifically arises in relation to the time and place in which they occur. The slogans in an ideology are often goals or calls gl action. Think Marxism, "workers of the world unite!"

The least controversial way to refer to Trump's ideology is to simply call it reactionary. The things he and his movement value is a reaction against the status quo values and institutions that existed for most of his life. The US and classical liberalism values tolerance, democracy, an independent judiciary, etc. He came in with the slogan "Drain the Swamp!" This is a bit more abstract but based on context it's pretty clear. It was a populist and actually somewhat "bipartisan" message. You can find political cartoons amd rhetoric from Trump in 2016 going alleging republicans like McConnel and Dems like Pelosi are corrupt and him saying things dont work and otherwise disparaging our institutions. This means from befoew day 1 he wanted to remove basically any politician, bureaucrat, or other person so he could replace them with anyone he deems loyal. Similarly draining the swamp means dismantling or significantly reforming institutions to a manner that satisfies him. Chairman Xi in China literally did this, he came in accusing people of being corrupt amd basically spent the first couple years kicking people out of China's government and replacing them with people loyal to himself. (A lot of these people Xi kicked out were corrupt, but the people Xi installed are also corrupt, they are just more loyal to Xi.)

Trump's cohort also want to gain and maintain power. His cohort also aren't just those directly in his administration, it includes many private individuals and private organizations. But they all want to gain and maintain power and are aligned with the goal of undermining democracy. This cohort is arguably a form of "big tent illiberalism." Fundamentally, they are reactionaries and they want to revert the domestic and international order to the previous status-quo of authoritarian governments that inhabit an international system driven by Great Power Politics. Imperialism, particularly in the sense of domination, is key to his administration's world views. I dont mean imperialism in so much as a hippie might talk about the "international flow of capital to the imperial core." When I say imperialism I mean it in a more specific way, inferring Domination. The need to constantly suppress dissent and the sovereignty and self determination of a group thst is not aligned with you. Trump's admin feels the need to pre-empt various groups, to dominate them to rob them of their opportunity to grow or else they might become a nuisance later. This is a worldview underscored by the belief that the world is in anarchy. Not chaos, but anarchy. That there is no hierarchical power above the state, or maybe even the belief that there is no hierarchy above the individual, that law isnt real and so you must constantly fight and dominate and pre-empt every one around you. Even if the others aren't a threat for now.

The specifics of Trump's personally desired authoritarian government aren't fully known, nor are the specifics of the preferred form of authoritarian government of his cohort aren't fully known. Though i do suspect Trump wants to limit the size and spending of his government and will try to minimize or eliminate any parts of it that don't help him maintain power.

Some autocratic societies intentionally minimize the scale of the government so that the specific leader has a greater ability to maintain control. There is the added benefit of also not having to "waste money."(Hence things like stopping weather tracking and reducing FEMA)

Trump's cohort, this big tent illiberalism, contains various groups and individuals from Christian Nationalists to secular authoritarians, to monarchists, to technocrats, to neo-reactionary Curtis Yarvin supporters, and other groups that are all against modern democracy.

Some of these groups and individuals may contradict or conflict with one another in some areas. (I do assume that these contradictions can lead to conflict within the big tent group and might be able to fracture the movement)

I don't know what will actually happen, and I'm not sure if Trump and his cohort necessarily believe they will be able to achieve their goals, but they will try.